Fort Jefferson
N 24° 37.658 W 082° 52.347
17R E 310463 N 2725008
One of the most remote National Parks. Ft Jefferson was a key fortification in the patroling of the Gulf of Mexico. It served as a Civil War era prison work farm.
Waymark Code: WM6YCC
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 08/05/2009
Views: 9
here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Fort Jefferson that can be found on WM6Y5V
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?Fort Jefferson, Florida
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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By 1863, during the Civil War, the number of military convicts at Fort Jefferson had increased so significantly that slaves were no longer needed. At the time, there were 22 black slaves employed on the project.
Fort Jefferson's peak military population was 1,729. In addition, a number of officers brought their families, and a limited number of enlisted personnel brought wives who served as laundresses (typically four per company). There were also lighthouse keepers and their families, cooks, a civilian doctor and his family, and others. In all, there were close to 2,000 people at Fort Jefferson during its peak years.
The fort remained in Federal hands throughout the Civil War. With the end of hostilities in 1865, the fort's population declined to 1,013, consisting of 486 soldiers or civilians and 527 prisoners. The great majority of prisoners at Fort Jefferson were Army privates whose most common transgression was desertion while most civilian prisoners transgressed by robbery. However, in July 1865 four special civilian prisoners arrived. These were Dr. Samuel Mudd, Edmund Spangler, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlen, who had been convicted of conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
Construction of Fort Jefferson was still under way when Dr. Mudd and his fellow prisoners arrived, and continued throughout the time they were imprisoned there and for several years thereafter, but was never completely finished. Mudd provided much-praised medical care during a yellow fever epidemic at the fort in 1867, and was eventually pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released. By 1888, the military usefulness of Fort Jefferson had waned, and the cost of maintaining the fort due to the effects of frequent hurricanes and the corrosive and debilitating tropical climate could no longer be justified. In 1888, the Army turned the fort over to the Marine Hospital Service to be operated as a quarantine station.
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